The coaching staff’s eagerness to get long looks at Easley and Hogan are obvious on both offense and special teams. Not seeing any time on special teams for Brandon Kaufman certainly doesn’t help his cause. We’ll have to see if he sees action on special teams this afternoon against Washington.

It seems as though the top four receivers slots are pretty much set with Stevie Johnson, T.J. Graham, Robert Woods and Marquise Goodwin manning those roles. Beyond that however, the battle for spots five and possibly six is heating up in the wake of the team’s preseason opener.

Chris Hogan was targeted three times and made a pair of receptions for 11 yards. That included a third down conversion on a 3rd-and-3 that led to a field goal for Buffalo. In fact all three times that EJ Manuel targeted Hogan was on third downs as Hogan worked primarily out of the slot Sunday.

Da’Rick Rogers was targeted just once in the game, but made the most of it earning praise from head coach Doug Marrone on his six-yard touchdown reception.

“Da’Rick Rogers really set the guy up nice, pushed him outside, ran the slant, scored the touchdown,” said Marrone.

Marcus Easley not only led all receivers in Sunday’s game with seven receptions for 94 yards, but now stands tied for the league lead in receptions after preseason Week 2 with Miami’s Chad Bumphis. He’s also second only to Bumphis in receiving yardage. Bumphis has 111 receiving yards.

Three of his receptions came on the first touchdown drive of the second half that was capped by Rogers. They went for 9, 29 and 13 yards respectively. He then caught four more balls on the next drive as Jeff Tuel was locked in on him for another 43 yards, good for more than half of the 68 yards on the drive.

“There were a lot of routes that we won. Easley made a couple of nice plays,” said Marrone.

And Brandon Kaufman tried to make himself a part of the conversation with a pair of catches for 34 yards, including a difficult grab along the sideline and a touchdown reception.

“I thought those guys were winning quite a bit out there. It’s got me interested moving forward,” said Marrone. “The one thing is those guys are going to have some opportunities and when they have those opportunities they’ll be able to separate themselves and we’ll keep evaluating. The good thing about it is that may be a tough decision down the road for us in how does that break up with those receivers? But that’s not a bad thing. I think we’ve got guys where all those guys I know can play at this level.”

There’s a respectable amount of talent among Buffalo 16 undrafted rookies that agreed to terms earlier this week. So much in fact that NFL.com’s Gil Brandt has the Bills right at the top of the league in terms of their undrafted free agent haul.

2) Buffalo Bills

The Bills were looking for receivers, and that’s what they got; Kaufman is a good possession type of guy, while Rogers has great speed. Tuel, who has the measurables and arm strength you want in a quarterback, was stuck on a very poor team in college. Pough looked good in workouts and at the combine.